"Vatican ends routine use of Latin in sweeping overhaul"

"The Vatican has announced the most far-reaching overhaul of its internal administration in a quarter of a century, with Pope Leo XIV approving two major regulatory texts that will reshape daily life inside the Holy See.

Signed on the Feast of Christ the King and published on 24 November, the new Regulation of the Roman Curia and the corresponding Regulation of Personnel set out a five-year ad experimentum framework intended to bring order, consistency and modern management to an institution long governed as much by custom as by law.

Among the most striking changes is the disappearance of the old requirement that curial acts be drafted “as a rule” in Latin. Vatican officials privately acknowledge that, with Italian, English, French and other modern languages now permitted for normal use, this will in practice mean the abandonment of Latin. Article 50 states that while “the curial institutions will normally draft their acts in Latin or in another language”, care will be taken to ensure that major documents intended for publication are translated into the most widely used languages."